This poem was written from a daily prompt hosted by MadVerse on Twitter.  The title is the prompt phrase. ❤ See more frequent posts on Twitter (text only) and Instagram (with graphics).

In my green
I haunt you
to paralyze
my blue.
When at last
you beg,
I come in
tangled
hues of red.

~Greta Stone

Behind-The-Scenes

Tangled hues of red immediately made me think of tangled sheets and red, swollen body parts. (Big surprise.) So I started with…

come in
tangled
hues of red

I knew that would be the closing because it packs punch. To open, I wanted contrast. The complement to red is green. The most obvious way to use green is to represent envy or jealousy.

In my green [jealousy]
I stalk you
[some other action]
and
come in
tangled
hues of red

I felt it needed a beat in between. Something else needed to happen between the stalk and the come. Plus I like odd numbers (as we’ve discussed) so I wanted a third color. Blue came to mind first, representing sadness and depression.

In my green [jealousy]
I stalk you
to chase away
my blue [sadness]
_________
and
come in
tangled
hues of red [passion]

Chase away… bleh. I did some searching for a better word. Paralyze went perfect with stalking. There still needed to be a beat before coming, unless I planned to rape the subject of the poem. haha

In my green [jealousy]
I stalk you
to paralyze
my blue [sadness]
until finally
you yield
and I
come in
tangled
hues of red [passion]

Finally throws off the rhythm. And yield is weak.

In my green [jealousy]
I haunt you
to paralyze
my blue. [sadness]
When at last
you beg,
I come in
tangled
hues of red. [passion]

Perfect. I love the accidental rhyming of you/blue and beg/red.